| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: fabled imikovu, or as men might do in their last faint agony. The
effect upon my nerves was quite strange, for when at last I reached my
wagons I was shaking like a reed, and a cold perspiration, unnatural
enough upon that hot night, poured from my face and body.
Well, I took a couple of stiff tots of "squareface" to pull myself
together, and at length went to sleep, to awake before dawn with a
headache. Looking out of the wagon, to my surprise I saw Scowl and the
hunters, who should have been snoring, standing in a group and talking
to each other in frightened whispers. I called Scowl to me and asked
what was the matter.
"Nothing, Baas," he said with a shamefaced air; "only there are so many
Child of Storm |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Would bear then more abundant and more big.
And many coarse foods, too, in long ago
The blooming freshness of the rank young world
Produced, enough for those poor wretches there.
And rivers and springs would summon them of old
To slake the thirst, as now from the great hills
The water's down-rush calls aloud and far
The thirsty generations of the wild.
So, too, they sought the grottos of the Nymphs-
The woodland haunts discovered as they ranged-
From forth of which they knew that gliding rills
Of The Nature of Things |
